1 Big Happy Family

Utah's Most Prominent Polygamists Just Want To Live And Let Live

February 10, 2002|By Mike Bianchi, Sentinel Columnist

GREENHAVEN, Utah -- Just the written directions to this place give you an indication that you are entering another realm that is far, far away.

"Across some railroad tracks Past Topaz Mountain You'll see a brown forest service-type sign with white lettering on the right hand side of the road (when it's not knocked down) Within a few hundred yards the pavement ends Warning; Gravel roads are slippery Others have flipped their cars on the turns Sheep corral on the right Caution: don't turn left coming out of the gully or you'll wander into Tule Valley and probably be lost and bogged down in the mud for a long, long time Enjoy this brief stretch of pavement, it will be your last for a while Go to the green mailbox that says, "Greenhaven" If no one comes out to greet you but the dogs and the children, just start knocking on doors. You'll find us."

The Winter Olympics are a place where all cultures and creeds have come together in Salt Lake City. They are a global crock-pot where varying races and religions are all thrown together and heated by the warm glow of acceptance. Skin color is meaningless. Black and white is replaced by gold and silver. Prejudice is pushed aside; differences are ignored.

But deep, deep in the Utah countryside, on the fringe of all this feel-good fellowship at the Winter Games, there is a group of people who say they should be able to live by the Olympic ideal as well. They want to be accepted for who they are. They want to live and let live. They are the Green family -- the most famous clan of polygamists on the planet.

Their 15-acre compound of a dozen dilapidated trailers is 250 bumpy miles southwest of Salt Lake City near the Nevada border. They live off "Pony Express Road" -- and, believe me, it is aptly named. It's an hour off the asphalt -- 50 miles of gravel, dirt and dust with nothing in the distance but sagebrush, tumbleweed and distant mountains.

The road signs, what few have been put up, are filled with holes from shotgun blasts. In these parts of rural Juab County, they don't like the government telling them what to do.

"We've got enough kids out here to start our own Olympic hockey team," says a smiling Shirley Green, welcoming a couple of Olympic journalists to a place they call "Greenhaven."

It is the home of five wives and 30 children and is named after Tom Green, the family patriarch and Utah's most noted polygamist. He's not home right now. He's in jail, maybe for the next five years after becoming the first person in nearly 50 years to stand trial in Utah for polygamy. Green, 52, was found guilty last summer of four counts of bigamy and one count of failure to pay child support.

"Tom's a political prisoner," Shirley says.

Green, one of the few polygamists who publicly flaunted his plural-marriage lifestyle, fumed during the trial: "You stick your head out of the hole, and the government will shoot if off. It's been the unwritten rule for 50 years in Utah: You'll pretend you don't exist and we'll pretend you don't exist."

Utah's nearly 30,000 polygamists are the state's worst-kept secret, hidden in these backwoods boondocks and tolerated only as long as they keep quiet. Especially during these 2002 Winter Olympics -- which is the perfect opportunity for the thriving Mormon Church, headquartered in Salt Lake City, to introduce itself to billions worldwide. This is not a time when the Church wants publicity about its most enduring and embarrassing legacy.

Even though the traditional Mormon practice of polygamy was officially banned in 1890, it still thrives among many of the most fundamental practitioners of the religion. And it's very hard to argue with their reasoning.

The founder of the religion, Joseph Smith, was said to have more than 30 wives, some as young as 14. In the latter years of his life, Smith was reportedly taking on more than one new wife a month.

Then, in 1866, Smith's successor, the revered Brigham Young, said, "The only men who become gods, even the sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy." And Young set out to prove his prophecy by taking 55 wives and having more than 100 children.

"If the Mormon Church and the State of Utah wants to distance themselves from polygamy, that's their choice," Shirley says. "But why should they be able to tell us what we should do and how we should live our lives? Tom and all of us have chosen to follow the teachings and examples of our religious founders."

As you sit in one of the mobile homes in the "Greenhaven" homestead, it all becomes very confusing. The wives seem happy; the children seem content. Four of the wives are actually two pairs of sisters -- Shirley and Lee Ann and Cari and Hannah. The other wife, Linda, married Green 16 years ago when she was 13. Linda's mother, June, was Green's first wife but has since left the family unit.

The kids are divided into age groups, starting with the A-team (oldest), going to the B-team and so on. "We're on the F-team now," Lee Ann says and giggles.